Climate Change is a Social Justice Issue

Are trees in the field human beings that they should come under siege from you? – Deuteronomy 20:19

The idiom, “Put your money where your mouth is,” is often trotted out to take to task hypocrites and those among us who appear to say one thing and do another – or allow our saying to stand in entirely for our doing. The expression is a close cousin of “Put up or shut up” and “Money talks, [insert crass expression] walks,” and they are all meant to use money, that buyer of goods and root of all evil, as a fair marker of our ethics – if we claim to support a cause, surely we will invest in it, and if we think something is immoral, then how could we knowingly contribute to it? I wonder, then, if it might not be equally appropriate for us to reverse those ‘M’s and put our mouth where our money is.

Certainly that was the intention of much that is written in Deuteronomy, a book intended to explain not only the covenantal relationship between God and people, but between people and the land (which is God’s, after all), among neighbors, and between the Israelites and strangers. “You shall not see your neighbor’s donkey or ox fallen on the road and ignore it; you shall help to lift it up,” a command from Deuteronomy 22:4, may strike us an obsolete instruction, but it is really a predecessor and parallel to Jesus’ story of the Good Samaritan. We are called to see the troubles of others – humans and God’s other creatures – and take these troubles on as our own. We cannot say, “Well, I didn’t know my investments were contributing to injustice,” and expect God to respect our ignorance. To put the words from Deuteronomy another way, “You shall not see your neighbor’s house ruined by floods or her fields ruined by drought and ignore them; you shall help to lift them up.”

Climate change is a social justice issue. Let me say that again. Climate change is a social justice issue. We ignore it at the peril of our churches, our communities, our families, and our planet (which is, again, God’s good Creation). In the 1980s, the world turned its attention to the atrocities of apartheid in South Africa. One of the ways that South Africans were able to liberate themselves was through global divestment campaigns. Student activists and church leaders in America and other countries demanded that any money supporting apartheid be removed – much in the way the U.S. Civil Rights movement used financial strategies to dismantle segregation. As we look at the devastating effects of climate change – from the terrible toll of Hurricane Sandy (in the Caribbean as well as the northeastern U.S.) to the vanishing of glaciers (that affects not only the beauty of Creation but access to drinking water) – we must commit ourselves to bold action. It is the most vulnerable people who pay the price for the excesses of the fossil fuel industries. Mountaintop removal, polluted rivers and streams, floods and famines – these are the sins of a More Oil, More Coal, More, More, More way of life. Divestment is atonement. It is a way for us to reconcile with the divinity of our planet, and reaffirm the sacred worth of all peoples, all places, and all creatures. It is time for us to repent. It is time for us to put our mouths where our money is.

For those interested in learning more about divestment as a strategy for addressing climate change, Bill McKibben will be speaking at the Variety Playhouse in Atlanta on Tuesday, November 20th. Visit www.350.org to find out more.

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Jason Myers was a 2009 FTE Congregational Fellow. He serves as Associate Pastor for Discipleship at Ebenezer Baptist Church and is a CPE intern at Church of the Common Ground and Central Outreach and Advocacy Center. He loves gardening, cooking, and in his spare time trying to save the world by organizing for Bill McKibben’s 350.org